The UK’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has announced that the UK will impose ‘Magnitsky’ sanctions on authoritarian regimes that

• “harass and imprison dissident journalists and campaigners […] with impunity in their own countries”.

Mr Raab stated that when the UK leaves the EU and therefore has autonomy over its sanctions regime, the UK will

• “hold those who commit serious abuses of human rights to account – by barring them from entering the UK, and freezing their assets such as bank accounts”.

This would be a use of ‘Magnitsky’ sanctions powers, which allow for the freezing of assets on the grounds of gross human rights violations, as provided for in the Sancion s and Money Laundering Act 2018 the UK’s post-Brexit sanctions legislation.

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